Jennifer Daskal, senior counsel for Human Rights Watch, discusses the invasion of Somalia by U.S.-backed Ethiopian forces, renditions ‘performed’ by the FBI, CIA and Ethiopian forces, the major humanitarian crisis in Somalia and the lack of support for the kidnapped victims.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Welcome back to Antiwar Radio, it's Chaos 92.7 FM in Austin, Texas, streaming live worldwide on the internet at ChaosRadioAustin.org and at Antiwar.com slash radio.
And our next guest today is Jennifer Daskal, she's from Human Rights Watch and the author of the new report, East Africa.
Why am I still here?
The 2007 Horn of Africa renditions and the fate of those still missing.
You may have seen the Salon.com version, which we highlighted in the viewpoint section on Antiwar.com last week.
More blowback from the war on terror.
Welcome to the show, Jennifer.
Thank you.
Good to be here.
It's good to have you on here.
This is a terrible, terrible subject, but it's one that I guess I'm happy to cover since it seems like almost no one else does.
I was really enthused to see that you guys at Human Rights Watch are keeping track of this thing and particularly the renditions.
Now, for those not familiar, of course, that's basically the euphemism for CIA abduction and oftentimes torture.
Let's start right there.
Is that the case in these renditions from the war in Somalia that people are being tortured?
In some cases, yes.
Basically, just a bit of the background, in late 2006, Islamists took over much of Somalia or at least the capital of Somalia.
Ethiopia invaded and ousted the Islamist authorities with the backing of the United States.
Hundreds of people fled across the border, some of whom were suspected of terrorist links.
And Kenya, in a series of operations, arrested at least 150 of these men, women, and children from at least 18 different countries.
They were brought to the capital of Kenya, held for some time, and then in late January, early February 2007, at least 85 of these men, women, and children were secretly flown or rendered to Somalia, where they were handed over to Ethiopian custody.
Once they were in Ethiopian custody, detainees basically followed one of two tracks, some who were of interest to the United States and possibly other foreign intelligence agents were brought to Addis Ababa, where they were, in fact, interrogated by the United States FBI and CIA agents in Addis Ababa in early 2007.
Another group of detainees were of interest, in particular, to the Ethiopians.
They were accused of being part of local insurgency movements.
Some of those detainees were held for over a year and released in February of 2008.
These detainees tell really horrific stories of being tortured and brutalized at the hands of Ethiopian military interrogators.
Okay, now, pardon me, the distinction between the two groups is the second group there are considered to be a local threat by the Ethiopian government, whereas the first group are people considered a threat by the United States?
Is that right?
Possibly.
I mean, we don't know exactly why they were being interrogated, but we do know that the United States was in Addis Ababa in early 2007, and on a daily basis, the Ethiopians would bring some detainees to a villa where CIA and FBI agents were operating out of, and they would interrogate the detainees about suspected terrorist links.
And then the Americans, as far as we know, the last time that they carried out one of these interrogations was back in May, which is the latest date, May 2007, so they haven't been there for quite some time.
Okay.
But you say it's the second group, the people who are considered more of a threat outside of the FBI-CIA thing, it's the locals who've been rendered to the Ethiopian government who are really being put through hell worse than the first group, is that?
I think that's right.
I mean, in the first group there, we've heard many reports about detainees being, you know, held in uncomfortable positions with hands cuffed behind their backs in really painful positions and feet cuffed together while they were in their cells, some detainees in solitary confinement for extended periods of time in two-meter-by-two-meter cells, so certainly abusive conditions.
But it's the group of detainees who were of exclusive interest to the Ethiopians who tell the most horrific stories of physical torture and abuse, and detainees I spoke with talked about having toenails and fingernails being pulled out, being beaten to the point of unconsciousness.
Two detainees I spoke to told me that their testicles had been crushed during brutal interrogations.
One detainee described having a loaded gun put to his head, so really brutal and horrific acts of torture.
Wow.
Well, so these are the guys who our government is working with in order to root out the terrorists, huh?
Possibly.
We actually had very good news this weekend.
In the report, we described the fact that there are 10, or as of the time of the report writing, that there were 10 detainees who we knew were in Addis Ababa, and then 22 others whose whereabouts are unknown in the sense that they were listed as individuals who were on the flight to Somalia in early 2007, and nobody's really heard from them since.
So for those 22, we simply don't know if they've since been released, if they're still in Ethiopian custody, or if they're in fact dead.
But we did know of 10 individuals who were in Ethiopian custody, and in fact, I had been able to speak to several of them by telephone in Addis Ababa.
Our report was issued last Wednesday, and on Thursday night, 8 of those 10 detainees were actually released from Ethiopian custody and returned to Kenya over the weekend.
Wow.
And then handed over to the Kenyan government?
Are they free now?
Yeah, they're back.
They're Kenyans.
They're 8 Kenyans, and they were returned to Kenya over the weekend.
Wow.
Well, that is good news, and it just goes to show what an effect you can have over there working with Human Rights Watch and putting out a report like this.
Congratulations to you for doing that.
They're human beings, oh, they're individual human beings, oh, they're freedom directly to you.
Thank you.
That's really great.
Now, let's see here.
I remember at the time of the somewhat proxy war there, I guess it's kind of a nuanced thing.
I talked with Ken Menkhouse a couple of weeks back, and he said that he was pretty sure that the Ethiopian government would have invaded with or without the Americans' help, but the Americans went ahead and helped anyway.
But beyond that, I remember some stories, I think from the Washington Post, where basically anybody who fled to the Kenyan border as Mogadishu was being bombed, that that was taken as at least an indication, if not proof, of some kind of guilt.
Why are you trying to run and cross the border?
These are the people who were being rendered, even though their capital city was being bombed.
At the time.
Right.
I mean, I think that's right.
There were certainly an operation along the border at the time in Kenya, and many, many individuals who were crossing the border, including women and children, were arrested and taken to Nairobi.
Several of those women and children were among those who were rendered to Ethiopian custody in Somalia, including several pregnant women as well.
And what can you tell us about the treatment of the women and children, especially the pregnant women?
The women that we've spoken to talk about being in horrific prison conditions and just the terror of not knowing what's going to happen.
They were denied contact with family members, denied lawyers, denied access to any sort of international humanitarian organization like the International Committee for the Red Cross.
You know, in all of the cases of individuals I talked to, they had no idea where they were being sent to until they actually landed and they were boarded on planes and then landed in Somalia and handed over to the Ethiopians.
So, I mean, I think it was a terrifying experience for many individuals, as you can imagine.
Yeah.
I'm interested in, you know, whether there's any law going on here.
You know, at the time Abu Ghraib and all those things came out, there were sort of suspicions and ended up documents came out and more and more we've learned the story of Dick Cheney and David Addington and the decisions made, the dark side, as Jane Mayer calls it, these kind of things.
You mentioned that the FBI was on scene, which, you know, they basically left after the rule of law was thrown out in Afghanistan.
They refused to participate after the rule of law was thrown out at Guantanamo Bay.
And yet, to some degree, they're participating in this.
And yet, at the same time, even these women, you say, are being denied access to the Red Cross and that kind of thing.
So I wonder if you can tell us anything about, or do you know about, any of the internal politics of which agencies are on board and to what degree, and whether there's any law behind this, or whether this is just Dick Cheney's dark side, you know, outside the rule of law type program going on here?
We tried to speak with officials from the FBI, and they refused to talk to us on the record.
But there have been statements in the press, and we've had some off-the-record conversations.
And I think their position has been that there's nothing inherently wrong with interviewing people that they believe are terrorist suspects, wherever they're held.
And on its face, there's, I mean, they're right.
There's nothing inherently wrong with interviewing terrorist suspects.
But here in this case, they were certainly complicit in the renditions and the incommunicado detentions.
They knew, or they certainly should have known, what was happening to these men, women, and children.
And so they cannot get away by simply claiming, you know, to be innocently interviewing people when detainees are in the types of conditions and have been subject to the type of illegal treatment that these detainees were subject to.
Yeah.
You know, I'd like to watch a congressional hearing on C-SPAN all about this.
It seems interesting.
The FBI obviously is intimately connected with this from the very beginning, in the sense that, well, according to the Washington Post, there were three al-Qaeda, quote, suspects wanted for questioning by the FBI for their involvement in the bombings in 1998 in Dar es Salaam and in Nairobi, the al-Qaeda bombings there.
And they said that there are three al-Qaeda suspects that the FBI is after.
So I guess that's their entry into this situation, right?
And that was sort of the excuse for American participation in this, catching three guys, right?
Yeah.
As I said, their argument has been that they're justified in interviewing individuals who they suspect of terrorist links wherever they're found.
That's their argument.
OK.
Well, something else that I forget whether you talk about this in your report or not, but it's something that we discussed with Ken Mankhouse on the show a couple of weeks ago.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with him.
He wrote an interesting policy paper all about the Somalia question just a few weeks back.
And he said that two and a half million people are basically on the brink of starvation in Somalia now.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees, entire societies have been torn apart.
Yes.
I mean, I think that we don't get into this in the report, but the situation in Somalia is absolutely tragic.
There's a massive, massive humanitarian crisis going on there.
And it's a complicated system.
There are multiple sides to blame for this.
But in the process, the innocent, the refugees, the innocent civilians are being completely neglected.
And it's a real travesty.
How much actual fighting is going on between the so-called new government there and the resistance?
From what I understand, there is a fair amount of fighting.
I'm not an expert on Somalia, so I don't think it would be right for me to comment on that.
But I do know that there is a pretty massive humanitarian crisis in Somalia right now.
All right.
Can you share with us some of the stories of the individuals that you talk about in your report?
Bahir Mokhtar.
Can you tell us about him?
Bahir Mokhtar, he is still in Addis Ababa.
He is of dual nationality, Canadian and Ethiopian.
He was rendered in late January 2007.
He is, as I said, still in Ethiopian custody.
He was finally granted consular access this summer, over a year and a half after he was first arrested, detained, and rendered.
He's reportedly been brought before a military tribunal in Ethiopia, but these are tribunals that are completely closed.
As far as we know, he's not provided a lawyer, and they are hardly anything akin to a fair trial.
And now, he's not the same guy that was taken to Guantanamo Bay, right?
That was...
No, there's another man by the name of Mohammed Abdul Malik.
He was brought to Guantanamo Bay a little over a year and a half ago, and the Kenyan government claims that they deployed him to Somalia and then washed their hands of him.
But a month later, he found that he somehow made his way to Guantanamo Bay.
And now, do you know if he is at least supposed to be one of the three Al Qaeda guys they were looking for, or whether they've caught any of those guys that were the original excuse for this?
I don't know.
Of the detainees who were flown to Addis Ababa, who have since been released, the U.S. has not filed charges against a single one.
So, there's no public record of any of the allegations against any of these men by the United States.
Mm-hmm.
Huh.
Okay, well, so, it seems like a lot of crisis for not much in the way of results here.
Yes.
I mean, I think that, you know, as we've said many times before, if in fact the United States or the Kenyan government or the Ethiopian government or the Somali government, for that matter, has a reason to believe that somebody has committed a terrorist act, then by all means they should be arrested, detained, and charged with the alleged crime.
But there's absolutely no justification for secretly detaining people, illegally flying them to other countries, and holding them incommunicado.
It ruins lives, and it ultimately undermines the very policies, the counterterrorism policies that these governments are hoping to promote, because it creates, it fuels resentment and creates animosity towards the government.
Mm-hmm.
What can you tell me about the Oromo, I guess when you're talking about the second group, the people who are mostly, you know, part of just what the Ethiopian government is up to outside of CIA and FBI participation?
This is what they're dealing with, right, is what they consider insurgencies in the Ogaden and Oromo regions of Ethiopia, is that right?
Yes, it's the Ogaden region, and the Oromos are an ethnic group, but, yes, the Ethiopians have long been involved in internal battles against what's known as the Ogaden National Liberation Front, and the Oromo Liberation Front, and have used this program as an excuse to get its hands on some individuals that it's accused of associations with these groups.
And these are the individuals that I spoke about earlier who have reportedly been subject to brutal torture while in Ethiopian captivity.
Mm-hmm.
So they're using our war on terrorism as a cover, sort of, for their own problems with internal dissent.
Well, I think that, I mean, I don't know if I'd go that far, but the rendition program, which the main culprits in the rendition program are Kenya and Ethiopia.
The United States was definitely involved.
We don't have evidence that the United States itself actually planned the renditions or carried out the flights, but the Ethiopians certainly used the existence of this rendition program to get its hands on detainees, and the process of rendition is certainly something that the United States has led, by example, elsewhere.
Mm-hmm.
Well, now, when you talked about the Red Cross not even being able to get to these people, has that changed at all, or that's still where we are right now?
That's still true.
Unfortunately, the Red Cross does not have access to detainees in Ethiopia, so these men are held, the ones that are still in Ethiopia are held without any sort of international humanitarian monitoring.
Mm-hmm.
Well, now, is there any kind of hope for some sort of oversight somewhere, I don't know, the African Union or the UN General Assembly or anybody trying to look into this?
I mean, as I said, there were eight detainees who were released over the weekend.
I think that there is certainly, there's a pretty widespread awareness of this issue in the region.
There's one Kenyan who's left, who we know is left in Addis Ababa, and there are many groups in Kenya who are quite concerned about his well-being and will hopefully continue to put pressure on the Kenyan government to secure his release.
There is one Canadian that we spoke about before, Bashir Mokhtar, and the positive news is that the Kenyan government has appeared to have made increased efforts to at least visit him in recent months, and hopefully there will be increased pressure on the part of the Canadian government as well to secure his release.
Do you know if there have been any examples of Canadian pressure on the American government to intervene on behalf of their citizen there?
I don't know, but the American government is not currently responsible for the detentions.
The American government would be in the same position as the Canadian government in terms of putting pressure on the Ethiopians.
Right, only may have a little bit more influence.
That's true.
That's definitely true.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, so basically it sounds like Human Rights Watch is the oversight here.
If we can get a little bit of pressure out of the Canadian government or maybe some of the governments in the neighborhood, that's basically the best to hope for right now.
Is that about right?
Yeah, I think so, and hopefully over time I think that there's a growing recognition that these practices and policies are not effective and that they actually undermine the counterterrorism goals that governments involved are hoping to achieve, and I'm certainly hopeful that over time we will see an end to these types of illegal actions.
Well, Salon.com picked up your report and made an edited version available at their website.
Have you gotten any other media attention about this?
Yes, we have.
It was written about and BBC wrote about it, AP, Reuters, the warrior services wrote about it quite extensively.
Oh, great.
It was picked up in a little short blurb in the World News Roundup in the New York Times as well, so there definitely has, and in the region, many Kenyan papers also wrote about it as well.
Any word from any congressmen?
Maybe some hearings?
Anything like that?
Congress is basically out now until January, so we've sent our report off to various offices and hopeful that come the new year we will see a big shift in policy and practice and hopefully some oversight and action on the part of Congress as well.
All right.
Well, everybody, that's Jennifer Daskal from Human Rights Watch.
The report is called Why Am I Still Here?
The 2007 Horn of Africa Renditions and the Fate of Those Still Missing.
You can read it at Salon.com, a truncated version.
More blowback from the war on terror.
Thank you very much for your time today.
Thank you very much.
